Brave and refreshingly open-minded.
The searching, intelligent account of a gay man's experiences growing away from God and into a thoughtful and humane atheist.
Religion blogger Stedman first heard the term "faitheist" used by a fellow atheist to disparage Stedman’s tolerance for the religious beliefs of others. In this book, he reclaims this misunderstood concept for himself and other like-minded individuals. Stedman embraces the faitheist label because it clearly shows his interest in “putting 'faith' in my fellow human beings and our shared potential to overcome the false dichotomies that keep us apart.” He began his religious explorations as a young teenager, not long before his parents divorced and he became aware of his homosexuality. However, he soon found out that the born-again Christianity to which he had dedicated himself shunned homosexuality. Stedman desperately tried to hide his orientation and “pray the gay away.” His mother took him to see a minister who validated Stedman and gave him hope that he could still have a positive relationship with God. By the time he entered college, however, his religious fervor was gone, and he had declared himself an atheist. Nevertheless, he still sought to understand religion, both intellectually and through community interfaith work. The more he delved into the deeper questions of religion and morality, the more he saw the commonalities he shared with men and women of faith. He also realized that too many atheists were demonizing "those with different metaphysical beliefs" in the same way others had demonized him for his homosexuality. Stedman concludes that greater understanding and tolerance for religious diversity is possible, but only by rehumanizing the "other" through "intentional encounter[s] with difference.”
Brave and refreshingly open-minded.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-8070-1439-4
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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